Final messages from P.S. Ruckman Jr. include cryptic social media posts, emails of his life's work

ROCKFORD — Four days before police discovered the bodies of P.S. Ruckman Jr. and his two sons in their home, Ruckman emailed his life's work on presidential pardons to a law professor and a reporter — a move some believe speaks to Ruckman's state of mind hours before the killings.

Ruckman, a 58-year-old Rock Valley College professor who police think shot and killed his sons, ages 12 and 14, before turning the gun on himself, also left behind a series of dark and somber messages and images on his Facebook page on the afternoon of Feb. 28 and in the early morning hours of March 1.

Ruckman posted 18th century poetry and 19th century art and music — all of which convey feelings of loss, grief, pain, betrayal, destruction and death. At 12:57 a.m. March 1, he wrote, "The only thing permanent is change" along with an image of sheet music for "Tod und Verklärung," a classical symphonic composition by Richard Strauss about a dying man.

These are just some of the details emerging in a flurry of news reports and social media posts as many in the Rockford community continue to grieve the deaths of Christopher and Jack Ruckman and offer support to their mother, Heidi. The Ruckmans divorced in August.

The emails, containing Ruckman's one-of-its-kind data set on presidential pardons and clemencies from George Washington to Donald Trump, were sent Feb. 28 between 3:30 and 4 p.m., said Gregory Korte, a USA Today White House correspondent.

There were 10 emails in all, Korte said. Only the first one contained a message: "Would want you to have this and use freely."

Winnebago County Coroner Bill Hintz said Wednesday that because pathology reports are not yet complete, the best estimated time of death of Ruckman's sons is the evening of Feb. 28. The Ruckmans were found dead Saturday in their home in unincorporated Winnebago County south of Cherry Valley.

Korte, who has interviewed Ruckman dozens of times in recent years, said he was "surprised and maybe a little bit concerned" when the emails arrived. He had asked for Ruckman's data in the past, he said, and Ruckman had declined, saying he was working on a book.

"I wondered whether something had happened to his book, something had happened to his job, something had happened to his health," Korte said. "Frankly, I never imagined that it would be what it ended up being."

Korte responded to the email Feb. 28 saying he was on deadline and would call later. He called March 1 and left a message. When he didn't hear back from Ruckman, Korte said, he looked at Ruckman's blog and Twitter account and "didn't see a whole lot."

When he still hadn't heard from Ruckman on Monday, he Googled him and discovered the news reports of the double-murder and suicide. He called the police.

Korte wasn't the only one to receive Ruckman's research last week.

Mark Osler, a professor at St. Thomas Law School in Minneapolis, said on his blog, Osler's Razor, on Tuesday that he, too, had received the data from Ruckman with the same note.

Osler, who had collaborated with Ruckman in the past, wrote that while the data was more than Ruckman had ever shared with him, he "didn't think much of it," and did not respond immediately.

Osler also makes mention of Ruckman's Facebook posts: sheet music from "Gotterdammerung," Richard Wagner's opera telling the story of the destruction of the world by Norse gods and Caspar David Freidrich's "Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog," an image of a man standing atop a rocky ledge, staring across a vast, ominous landscape.

"I'm not going to speculate on why he would do this, as alleged," Osler wrote. "It is a horrific and unimaginable crime, and no circumstances would conceivably justify or mitigate it."

According to RVC's online course schedule, Ruckman taught American National Government at 9 a.m., 10:30 a.m. and noon on Wednesdays.

Before sending the emails to Korte and Osler on Feb. 28, Ruckman wrote on his Facebook page, “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men Gang aft a-gley.”

The line, from Robert Burns' poem "To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest With the Plough," roughly translates to: “The best laid schemes of mice and men Go often askew.” The line that follows: “And leave us nothing but grief and pain, For promised joy!”

The line is the most quoted of Burns' poem, often used to as a proverbial way to say that things did not turn out as planned, said Ted Underwood, a University of Illinois professor of English and information sciences who specializes in Romantic-era literature.

“It doesn’t always carry the darkness of the original poem,” Underwood said of how the line often is used today. “If I had seen that, I wouldn’t leap to frightening conclusions. … In retrospect, you start thinking about the broader context of the poem.”

The line also is representative of the John Steinbeck novel “Of Mice and Men,” Underwood said. In the final scene in the book, George kills his intellectually disabled cohort Lennie in order to spare him from a more gruesome fate.

“Suicidal thinking is common in older divorced men,” Dr. Michael Welner, chairman of The Forensic Panel and a clinical professor of psychiatry at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, said in an email. “And a murder-suicide, in the absence of active conflict with victim children, is carried out by a father who does not want his kids to experience the shame of his suicide, and convinces himself that taking them as well is in their interest.

"However, I think it unwise to consider that he killed two boys, in the absence of conflict with either of them, without his considering its impact on their mother." Welner is a forensic psychiatrist with expertise in death investigations.

Friends began to comment on Ruckman's Facebook posts after news of the deaths spread.

“I see a scholarly mind that is utilizing scholarly pictures, music and poetry to express intellectual perspective — perhaps with a sense of arrogance, as if to say ‘see how smart I am’ — while justifying his decisions and actions," one friend wrote on Ruckman's Facebook page.

Winnebago County Sherrif's Chief Deputy Mark Karner said Wednesday that he couldn't answer questions about Ruckman's final emails and Facebook posts.

"I can’t go into any evidentiary details of the case," Karner said. "Our detectives are conducting the most thorough investigation they can to get to the truth."

Korte said he spoke to police on Monday.

"The detective I spoke to said they did feel it was potentially significant that he sent his life’s work," Korte said. "This was something of great value to him. For him to give it away said something about his state of mind."

Osler ended his blog post with the following passage: "At the end of my book on criminal law, I wrote about how this field is all tragedy, and about the struggle to comprehend and control that tragedy. But this ... this is beyond what I have imagined. Help me, if you can, to make sense of this world."

Staff writer Georgette Braun contributed to this report.

Kevin Haas: 815-987-1410; khaas@rrstar.com; @KevinMHaas

Corina Curry: 815-987-1371; curry@rrstar.com; @corinacurry

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